Program Collaborations

Summer Writing Courses in Partnership with PSU

The Portland Art Museum in partnership with Portland State University offers summer graduate and undergraduate classes in writing for teachers, PSU students, and the general public. These 8-week, 3-credit classes may be taken for graduate or undergraduate credit or audit. Classes are limited to 15 students. Registration begins May 7 and the term runs June 25 through August 19.

This is a class for writers, for teachers doing professional development, and for people interested in exploring—both intellectually and as practicing writers—the stimulating connections between creative writing and the visual arts. The course will combine close study of literary texts and visual art with weekly poetry workshops. We will focus on different kinds and uses of analogies throughout the history of poetry and art, including metaphor, metonymy, and allegory, frequently drawing on examples from the collections at the Portland Art Museum. Students will respond to weekly writing prompts and will discuss their attempts to emulate or counter aesthetic approaches drawn from a wide variety of periods and movements.

This class will examine the source texts for a number of works of art on display at the Portland Art Museum in order to contextualize and develop narratives around these pieces. We will study the ways in which artistic representation involves a reimagining and, in a sense, rewriting of sources. Readings will include selections from Ovid, Homer, Plutarch, and Shakespeare, as well as excerpts from various religious texts. Artworks include Renoir’s Venus Victorieues, Lipshitz’s Prometheus Strangling the Vulture, Maillol’s Leda, Izquierdo’s Icarus, Baskin’s Hephaestus, Corneille’s Cleopatra and the Apse, Blanchet’s Mercury and Herse, and others.

Tuition

Undergraduate credit: $451.40 | Graduate credit: $1,043.00 | Auditors pay the same tuition as students taking the class for credit and a grade.